


the light on your door to show that you're home

by JustBeforeTheDawn



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Bad Parent Alice Cooper (Archie Comics), Bad Parent FP Jones II (past), Demisexual Jughead Jones, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, FP Jones II tries, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Jellybean Jones is a Good Sister, Jellybean spent like 10 episodes upstairs playing minecraft, Mean Alice Cooper (Archie Comics), Minor Alice Cooper/Hal Cooper, Mother-Daughter Relationship, all five of them live in a house together, betty and jb should be friends veronica is too busy making rum, why are there no more JB and Jug scenes?, you know the show is unlikely to use this situation for character development
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23396428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustBeforeTheDawn/pseuds/JustBeforeTheDawn
Summary: Home has meant very different places, over the years.  Family has always meant something messy.Jellybean (JB, please) Jones is living in a very complicated home with thin walls, trying to re-connect with her resurrected brother, and connect as little as possible with her brother's girlfriend's mother.  Sorry, her father's girlfriend.  Sorry, her half-brother's mother.Gladys was terrible, but she thinks having Alice as a mother might be worse.Jughead just wants to hang out with his little sister.Edit: as of today I'd like to up my Riverdale writers' opinion from 'creepy and problematic' to 'creepy, problematic, thin-skinned and unable to cope with legitimate criticism'Edited edit: are the writers going out of the way to appear unlikeable this week?  there's teasing, which i get, and then there's just being ostentatiously unpleasant, regardless of actual plot
Relationships: Alice Cooper/FP Jones II, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, FP Jones II/Gladys Jones (Past), Jellybean Jones & Jughead Jones have missed being siblings
Comments: 74
Kudos: 111





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> all the riverdale parents are terrible, barring mary who should be allowed to live a lovely life with her girlfriend a long way away from the stupid town. fred was basically fine but he really was surprisingly chilled out about the whole statutory rape thing. found it hard to forgive.
> 
> FP's trying but really the coopers and the joneses suck. advance warning: alice is horrible and manipulative in this, but no worse than she has been in canon.
> 
> also hello canon could we have more interactions that actually inform characters please? betty and jellybean have been awkwardly living in a house where their parents are sleeping together, but made very few jokes about it. now jughead's back it's gonna be even weirder and you just know the show is barely going to mention it. if you're gonna do this pseudo-incest crap, riverdale (and i really wish you wouldn't) at least take the piss out of it a bit? use the awkwardness for some much needed comedy, instead of more prolonged punch-ups and badly-written love triangles?
> 
> yeah no i know you won't

It was the third week since Jughead had returned from the dead, and Jellybean thought she was going to go mad.

It wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever been through; she spent a lot of time in her room playing Minecraft anyway, so an extra person inside the house was hardly difficult. FP had had to put his foot down, insisting that she went out for her daily walks. It was very unfamiliar to her to have a parent with such an investment in Jellybean living a healthy life. Gladys had mostly let her do her own thing, more interested in running the Toledo Serpents or trying to take over the drugs trade in Riverdale. At the time, Jellybean had thought it was a reflection on her own maturity, and her mom was totally cool for letting her have so much freedom. It took a few months of making friends at Riverdale Middle School, whose parents kept them on a tighter leash, but spent so much more time looking after them, for JB to start grasping what a skewed perspective Gladys had given her.

FP, too, had changed. The Dad that JB remembered from before she and Mom moved to Toledo was very different; bleary-eyed, letting Gladys do the bulk of parenting for both their children, always confused. She remembered him blinking at Jughead’s school reports, the grades sliding down in parallel with their lives’ downwards slide in turn.

“You’re such a clever boy, just like your mom,” FP had slurred once. “You’re a good kid, Jughead, you’re so bright, you can just work a bit harder, get these grades back up.”

Jughead had sniffed, swiped his hand under his nose, and slunk away, headphones jammed over his head.

“It’ll get better, Jelly,” he whispered one evening, as Jellybean sheltered in his room from the sounds of yet another argument. “Dad’ll get better, and it can go back to the way it was before.”

It never got better. Jughead’s grades continued to slip as he missed more and more homework while looking after Jelly, trying to make sure he and his sister were fed from the meagre supply of food in the house. One day he didn’t come home at all, hauled off to juvie for playing with matches. Jellybean knew Jughead would never have tried to burn down the school if it was the place where he could see Betty and Archie; would never have burned down the place that could get his little sister an education, a route out of their crappy lives.

By the time Jughead was out, Gladys had left, taking a sleeping Jellybean with her. Jellybean had fallen asleep in the trailer and woken up in their grandparents’ house in Toledo without ever knowing that they were abandoning her brother.

FP, now, even after quitting as Sherriff, was not just trying, but mostly succeeding at being a decent father. He cooked for them; cleaned around the house to Jones standards or above, always made sure there was enough food to satisfy both Jughead and JB’s appetites, making up for the years that had left his children hungry. He tried to listen to JB when she told him about her current projects, and had hauled his old record collection out of storage to introduced her to people like Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, or even Floyd Anderson and Pink Council, who’d been the namesakes for JB’s beloved Floyd. He and Jughead got along so much better, although JB thought that there were some things she’d missed that made Jughead flinch every so often, some terrible damage that FP had done while she was away. Maybe one day Jughead would feel comfortable enough to tell her, the same way she heard him telling Betty everything, in that low, soft voice he reserved for his girlfriend.

There was the problem.

Alice tried her best to be JB’s new pseudo-parent; but she had been a bad enough real parent to Betty, most of the time, that JB couldn’t warm to her.

“Jellybean, honey, don’t you think that a third helping is a bit much?” she’d said once. Jughead had slammed his fork down on to the table, a grizzled snarl spreading across his face, where before there had only been a slight smile. Betty had gone pale, her own hands spread uncomfortably flat on the tablecloth.

“I think JB’s fine, Mrs C.,” Jughead had snapped. “We’ve got more than enough food. Haven’t we, Betty? Would you like some more?”

Betty had flushed, relaxed, and smiled encouragingly at JB.

“I’m fine – honestly, Juggie - but JB, feel free, I made more than enough for everyone, even if three of us are Joneses.”

Alice had smiled blankly, and sipped her wine. JB wasn’t sure what the precise meaning of that little argument was; but after that, she had heard Betty hissing to Alice that JB was not her kid, Mom, you don’t get to say things like that to her.

JB was glad she was not Alice’s kid.

Their house set-up was very weird. FP and Alice shared the master bedroom; Jughead and Betty shared the room that Betty had grown up in, until Gladys had bought it for Jughead. They had lived like that over the summer, without any real problems. FP had been too distracted as Sherriff to protest against two seventeen-year-olds shacking up together, simply commenting ‘at least there’s more room than last time’. Over the summer, JB hadn’t found it that weird at all; Betty and Jughead were so in sync that sharing each other’s space just seemed like the logical extension of their relationship. Besides, Jellybean had headphones and earplugs, so who was she to complain?

It only started getting weird after the mess with Stonewall Prep, and Jughead and Betty and their weird friends faking Jughead’s death, with the help of JB’s own half-brother Charles. JB kind of missed him; she’d got used to him, although she didn’t know if she’d ever get used to him being Alice’s son too.

They’d all forgotten that, even though Betty had lived with them since the summer, and Alice had returned triumphantly from taking down a cult only a few weeks after Jughead had started at Stonewall, all five of them had never actually stayed in the same house for any length of time. Jughead and Betty were sickeningly wrapped up in each other, as ever; even more so since Jughead’s second near death after months of separate living. JB found herself unable to blame them, even if she got tired of coming into their room to ask for homework and finding them curled up with one another, nesting in front of some classic film or other. Jughead’s posters were now tacked up alongside Betty’s photos; his sherpas hung neatly in the closet, sorted into a colour spectrum (JB thought she detected Betty’s hand there).

They always made time for JB, if she needed help. Betty was a straight A student, and now that Jughead’s life was approaching stability, he was approaching the same level, proving FP’s long ago drunken statement about how bright his son was. JB couldn’t resent them; as much as she’d struggled with the idea of her weirdo older brother having this bright blonde geek of a girlfriend at first, she’d come to trust Betty absolutely.

Alice did not extend the same courtesy.

JB had heard the argument about Betty’s birth control (honestly, she hated the idea of Jughead having sex in the room next to her but wasn't it the right thing to do? She’d already resolved to ask Betty about sex and stuff if she ever had questions about stuff the school’s crappy sex-ed couldn’t answer. JB certainly wasn’t going to ask Alice), and the money thing, and now that Jughead was back, Alice was freaking out about her daughter sharing a bed with her boyfriend. Again.

“You’re too young, Betty!” she shrieked, every word audible through the walls. “How can you be mature enough to handle this?”

“Mom,” came Betty’s angry voice. “We’ve talked about this already. We talked about this a year and a half ago, and I told you then we were being safe! Why can’t you just let this go?! Please, we spent so long separated and Jughead nearly died! It’s not like we’re having sex the _whole_ time, Mom, we just want to be close to each other!”

“You’re playing games with your life, Betty, I don’t want you to make the mistakes I made-”

“Don’t bring Charles into this! That was different, Mom, you and FP- I’m not going to get into this, talking about this makes me feel gross, Mom.”

Jughead knocked on the door of JB’s room, and entered.

“Your girlfriend’s mom is freaking out about sex, Jug,” teased JB. “What if Betty grows up to be like Alice? That’s your future right there, dork.”

“Betty is nothing like Alice,” replied Jughead instantly. “Did you know Alice accused Betty of actually bashing my brains in? Like, Archie and Veronica’s parents were all ‘ooh, my baby would never hurt a fly’, even though technically those two have _both_ killed people, and Alice was like ‘aw, Betty honey, I always thought you’d kill him one day’.”

“Okay,” said JB. “So she’s a freaking psycho. Shouldn’t you go and rescue Betty? Or, like, get Dad to put Alice under arrest? I feel like me and her are the only people in this house who haven’t been arrested yet. Maybe she feels left out.”

Jughead snorted.

“I’m not going to fight Betty’s battles for her, not when me losing my temper at Alice’s shitty projecting would be actively counter-productive,” he said, sitting on JB’s bed with a heavy sigh. “I’m just gonna make sure I’m there for her as soon as this most recent diatribe is over, and let Betty vent. In a few months Betty’ll be an adult and it’ll be completely legal for her to tell Alice to piss off.”

Some more screeching about Betty’s attitude to sex came through the walls.

“Besides,” said Jughead. “If I go in there now, Alice will only accuse me of using my magic penis to disrupt Betty’s life again.”

“Ewwwwwwwwwww,” said JB. “I’m never having sex, ever.”

“Seems fair,” said Jughead. “You don’t have to. Some people don’t ever want to. I genuinely thought I didn’t, for a long time, so I get it.”

“You didn’t?”

“Yeah, I found the idea of sex strange, and kind of gross? But then it turns out... you know, Betty exists, and she’s definitely _strange,_ but she is so, so far from gross.”

“Ew. Ew ew ew.” JB pressed her hands over her ears. “I already know you two are doing it, I don’t have to hear you talking about it! It’s bad enough I have to hear Alice talking about it, Jug.”

Jughead shot a glare at the opposite wall, where Alice’s voice had dropped to her familiar, patronising level, trying to tell Betty that she was being irrational. JB had heard it a lot, since Alice had reappeared in the autumn. At least Gladys just gave her arguments when they’d fought, instead of trying to convince her that she was being crazy. Poor Betty really didn’t need more of that. She’d already been so scared, she’d confessed to Jellybean, when no-one else in the house knew what had really happened on the Ides of March, that Alice and Evelyn and Donna were right, and she had somehow hurt Jughead so badly he’d nearly died. JB hadn’t liked that; had known, as she’d always told Betty, that no such thing was possible. All the crazy fathers, manipulative bitches and controlling mothers in the world could not possibly convince JB that the Betty Cooper she had become fond of would willingly hurt Jughead Jones.

“Astonishingly,” said Jughead, taking his hat off and rubbing his hands through greasy hair, “Alice is still somehow the better parent, although both of them have been pieces of shit. At least Alice only tells Betty she’s always thought she was a murderer. Hal did that, and _then_ he tried to kill Betty for proving him wrong. I guess that makes Alice only the deeply shitty parent, instead of the beyond shitty parent.”

“Our parents are pretty shitty, too, Jug, Mom was a drug ki- queenpin, I guess? And Dad’s doing so much better but he was a mess for a long time. And you said his dad, Forsythe, he was a mess, too.”

“Yeah, I dunno why dad wants to reconnect with him,” said Jughead. “At least the Andrewses were okay to Archie, although they seem to have given Archie a messy Madonna-whore complex.”

He gestured to the window. Archie was staring through his own window in the house opposite, confusion and mild longing on his face, at Betty and Jughead’s room.

“What are you gonna do about that?”

“Dunno. Not sure if Betty knows or not. I’m kind of hoping that Archie gets over himself and realises he’s got a good thing going with Veronica. If not I'm gonna tell him he doesn’t need to think about my fucking girlfriend as some kind of idealised someday wife when, as it turns out, women are real people who shouldn’t be reduced to that kind of outdated sexist stereotype. I fell into the trap of thinking Betty was less complicated than she is once, and I made some of the worst decisions of my life. Luckily, she's complicated in the best possible way, so she forgave me.”

JB scowled, and stood up the change the record on her deck.

“Jughead,” she said. “Since we’re being all frank and stuff with each other, and talking about wives and husbands and that. Do you- Do you think our Dad and Alice are good together? Is this,” she gestured at the house, with its big rooms, heating, en-suite bathrooms, “Is this gonna last?”

“Dunno,” said Jughead again. He patted the bed next to him, and JB sat down, still delighted to be able to sit with her brother and accept a skinny hug, after their years of separation, and their mom’s machinations. “They didn’t last when they were my age, but they were different people then. They’ve got Charles linking them together now, but he’s an adult who’s somehow grown up better than either of them, despite having an even worse life than us. I think they like each other, very much, but I don’t think Alice likes me and Betty being together very much. And if she thinks she can persuade us apart by pulling the kind of shit that she’s pulled over the years... I don’t think Alice has really ever been in love, if she believes that. Maybe being together will make them better. I think it’s made Dad feel better. Being with Betty has made me better. Maybe even Alice can get better.”

JB leaned against him. She hadn’t thought about it that way before, although hoping that their dad, who struggled with his own demons, could help the terrifying and nasty Alice through hers, seemed doomed to fail.

Jughead drew in a deep breath, and then paused.

“What is it, dork?”

“Jellybean,” he said, looking at her seriously. “If Betty and I left, before college, if we left as soon as we graduate and got out of here, out of this terrible town, if I got Betty away from Alice – I know I said I didn’t want to fight her battles, but I can’t help wanting to protect her from someone who told her she believed she was a murderer – would you hate me? I don’t want to leave you here alone, but you’ve got Dad, and Charles-”

“Oh my God, go!” Jellybean bounced up and down. “You get your college places – I’ll help you research – I can help Betty pack her stuff secretly, we can say it’s for me to go to camp or something – you should go! I can come visit you, right?”

Jughead hugged her, his arms tight around Jelly’s shoulders, silent and joyful.

“You are the best sister in the world,” he whispered. “And I’m not just saying that because Betty’s sister went nuts and joined a cult, and Veronica's sister is in the Mafia. I am so, so lucky Mom brought you home. And yes! Of course you can visit, I’ll insist on it, you tell us weekends where Alice is busy and Dad can drive you up, or Charles if the FBI ever gives him free time.”

“I can’t believe you’d leave me with Alice, though, Jug, you owe me like a million candy bars for that.”

“You can handle Alice Smith, JB, you’re the coolest kid in town, and I'd get you candy anyway for being awesome.” Jughead looked up at the record deck. “Like, this is _The Velvet Underground and Nico_ , right? Look how cool you are. I love this album. My old laptop has Velvet Underground stickers on it. Ugh, I can’t wait til I get that thing back from evidence. Fucking Bret Weston Wallis.”

“If you’re gonna talk about that time those rich kids tried to murder you again, Jug, you can get out,” said JB, grinning. “You need some new anecdotes, it’s getting kind of boring. We’ve all had someone try to murder us, Jug.”

“Ooh, look at you, Miss ‘the Gargoyle King kidnapped me and I didn’t even notice’.”

“In all seriousness, Jug, I just heard the door slam. You should go and canoodle your girlfriend or whatever you guys do.”

“Betty!” yelped Jughead, leaping to his feet and dashing to the door. He paused, and looked back at JB.

“Would you... can you listen to this with your earphones? It’s just... Betty and I were thinking of new ways to piss off Alice, and we were watching _When Harry Met Sally_ -”

“Oh, my God, shut up Jug, you didn’t need to explain!” JB grabbed her headphones, and her brother darted out of the door. From the room next to her, she could hear Betty’s frustrated voice, mercifully full of justified rage, rather than the tearful sound JB had heard after some of Alice’s most bizarre rants. Jughead’s voice was soothing, controlling his own temper, for once, and within a few moments, JB could hear Betty laughing, both voices scheming mischievously.

Their parents were a mess, Jellybean thought. Maybe Betty and Jughead could find some way of escaping this town, and the mess that caused Hal and Gladys, Alice and FP to hurt their families the way that they did. College wasn’t so many years away for JB herself; maybe she’d get out of there too, find somewhere else where the absurdities of Riverdale could never mess up her life. She could be the fun aunt to Betty and Jughead’s kids (if they had kids), who’d hopefully never go hungry, or cry themselves to sleep, with a mother and father who were never cruel to them. If they had a little boy, he wouldn't be Forsythe the Fourth (God, why did men have to name their sons after themselves?), and wouldn't have to reject yet another generation of cruelty and disappointment.

Mothers who were kind to their daughters' minds and bodies. Fathers who openly adored their sons, without that toxic distancing expected of men. People, parents, who didn't feel the need to raise their children into either of those shitty gender roles. That kind of stuff could stay behind in Riverdale, in this strange, old-fashioned town, stuck in the past where it belonged.

They were going to get out of there.

Jellybean knew it.


	2. Reflect what you are, in case you don't know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty knows a lot of people are confused after they faked Jughead's death. The people who matter most are not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I genuinely hate love triangles. They are so often a really goddamn lazy device to create angst and drama without building it up, and the shit in these last three episodes is so lazy and unconvincing, it makes me feel uncomfortable. If you like it, I'm sorry, feel free not to read this.
> 
> also I have a desperate need for betty to interact with another girl who is not her horrible mother, murdery donna who somehow got off scot-free, or veronica, who is... fine, but honestly we have no evidence of them being friends? for most of the series now? and when they do write them scenes, it's refreshing but their plots have so little in common it's hard to find it believable. there should be more betty and jellybean. they live in the same house and they've talked twice.

When she thought about it, Betty felt a bit sick. It was _almost_ the same kind of feeling she got when she thought about kissing Jughead, about having sex; the same sensations but gone wrong. Her heart pulsed, but it hurt in her chest, instead of making her the good kind of breathless. Instead of her senses sharpening, her blood roared in her ears, making it hard to listen. Her hands shook, not with anticipation, but with fear of having to deal with the situation.

She wondered what the opposite of being turned on was. 

  
God, Cheryl was a manipulative bastard, even when she thought she was being helpful. It had come in helpful when Betty needed it, but God, she almost regretted it now.

  
Almost.

  
Okay, she couldn't regret anything that had helped to keep Jughead alive.

  
It was just that Cheryl was now convinced that Betty was falling for Archie, because they'd had a few sexless, uncomfortable kisses, and some ostentatious hand-holding in the corridors of Riverdale High. Worse, Veronica seemed to be semi-convinced, too.

  
Even worse, Betty was afraid that Archie was thinking the same thing.

  
It was horrible. She'd tried to keep things as unawkward as possible, with this ludicrously contrived scheme to distract attention from Jug, hidden safely in the bunker. She'd read back over her texts, wincing every time something she said could be interpreted as flirty instead of friendly, and Archie replied in the same vein.

  
Could Archie have thought that this was... Some kind of real entanglement? Was that really what he, what Veronica, what Cheryl thought was realistic? Okay, she guessed they could argue it was a crazy situation, where emotions were running high and everything was confusing. Well, her emotions weren't running high. Every time she needed to play the girlfriend role she'd dreamed of as a fifteen-year-old, she was brutally calm, unhappy but knowing it was vitally important. It was the same calm that had appeared when she'd told Archie not to tell his mother kept her sane.

  
Did Cheryl, Kevin, and the rest of the students, really think that it was realistic behaviour? To see her boyfriend's body in the mortuary one morning, and two days later jump into a relationship with his best friend? And then, knowing that it had all been fake, that Betty would develop feelings for Archie, who was quite honestly an idiot?

  
Cheryl wouldn't know a healthy relationship if it smacked her in the face. She had told Betty her interpretation of the situation, as if Betty didn't know what was going on in her own head, and Betty had tried to shut her down.

She knew Cheryl hadn't accepted it. Even now, in their ridiculous rum bar in the old Maple Club, Betty feared her cousin was pouring yet more poison into Veronica's ear.

  
If that was all, she could deal with it; she'd barely seen Veronica all year, both of them dealing with their own problems. It ought to take little more than a few milkshakes and heartfelt conversations at Pop's to convince Veronica otherwise; if not... Well, Betty could just get on with decidedly _not_ being in a relationship with Archie to prove it. It shouldn't take too much effort.

  
But then there was Archie. 

  
Archie, who couldn't make up his own mind. Archie, who split up with Veronica to protect her and was making out with a stranger a day later, according to Jughead. Archie, who'd split up with Veronica before because she wouldn't say she loved him, who'd kissed Betty a few days later during one of the worst times of her life (honestly, couldn't that one mistaken kiss have been enough for Archie? As soon as their lips had met, her heart had been pounding _wrong, wrong, I don't want it at all_ ). Archie, who lusted after every girl except Betty, but always thought they'd get married one day.

  
_Fucking Archie_.

  
He kept giving her confused looks of longing through their windows, glancing awkwardly at her hands when she and Jughead linked their fingers together.

  
Betty knew he'd been confused about his future, wondering if he would be left behind in Riverdale when Veronica went off to do something tediously entrepreneurial. That didn't, _didn't_ mean he was entitled to look at Betty like that, to return to that nostalgic dream of her as the perfect housewife who'd raise their kids and keep food on the table, after he'd worked his way through all the girls (adult women, too) in Riverdale. Just like Mary and Fred a generation ago, who'd split up. Mary, who'd found someone else in the end, who'd reconnected with someone outside the neat suburban life that she'd been unsatisfied with. Fred, who'd been a good father, a great guy like Archie was, but who made a real mess of his life sometimes.

To some degree, Betty could cope with Archie; what pissed her off the most was Alice.

Alice thought she was capable of killing Jughead. Alice thought she'd hook up with Archie.

Alice wanted so much from her, projected so many insecurities and expectations on her, and in the end, Alice didn't understand her at all. Alice, despite Hal, despite FP, still yearned secretly for Betty to slink off into the same idealised, suburban, sexist mould that had ruined her own life so completely. Betty could cry, for all the horrible things Alice had suggested under the guise of sympathy.

JB stuck her head round the door. 

"Jug's going to Pop's," the girl said cheerfully. "You want anything?"

 _Nothing except your brother, for the rest of our lives_ , thought Betty, feeling maudlin and over-dramatic. 

"No, thank you, JB," she said instead. "Maybe some fries, so Jughead can steal most of them and feel like he's got one over on me." 

"You okay?" 

"I'm fine, JB." 

"Okay," said JB, coming in. "You're clearly not fine, and you're usually better at lying than this. Unless you're pretending Jug's dead, and then you suck, but that seems fair. You wanna talk to me?" 

Betty wanted that, awfully; wanted to talk to another girl who wasn't Veronica, absorbed in rum and convinced Betty was angling after her stupid boyfriend; wasn't Cheryl, whose idea of fond familial support was nearly as poisonous as the years of bullying she'd already inflicted on a more fragile, younger Betty.

She wanted to talk to another woman who wasn't Alice. 

"If... If you don't mind, JB," she said, "I could really vent." 

"It's okay," said JB. "Just know I'm not sitting on your bed, or anywhere near where you and my brother have done... Stuff." 

Betty decided not to tell her that that ruled out most of the room. Instead, JB plonked herself cross-legged on the floor.

"Are you gonna leave my brother for that thick-skulled football player?" asked JB blankly. Betty blinked, and immediately lost her temper.

"Why the hell would I do that?!" she demanded. "Why do some people think I'd do that? You really think that a kiss, a kiss I was forced to do, while I was scared for my boyfriend's life, while I was risking prison to save him, _that_ would make me forget all about the boy I love? That I'd forget everything we'd been through on the last two years and just... Regress to my fucking childhood crush?! Is that really what people - you - my mom - think I'm like? Fuck, you all think I'm such a... A bitch!"

JB grinned at her. 

"If I ever thought that, Betty, I sure don't now," she said, rubbing Betty's arm. "Your mum really thinks that?" 

"Alice thinks it's understandable if I did," said Betty resentfully. "Alice, who hid a baby from her gang leader boyfriend and pretended it was her serial killer boyfriend's instead, thinks I need understanding advice from _her_. No offence, JB."

"None taken," said JB. "I think you've got the shittiest luck, Betty, when it comes to parents, but I'd be lying to myself if I said me and Jug didn't have pretty crappy parents ourself. Ourselves?"

"Ourselves, I think, JB," said Betty automatically. "Ugh, I sound like Alice."

"You sound helpful," retorted JB. "My mom's a criminal and treated Jug like trash, but honestly, Betty, your mom's kind of a bitch."

"I just wanted it to be over, you know?" said Betty, nodding her agreement to JB. "All this stuff me and your brother went through, and the only long term consequences are Jug's second concussion in two years and the school thinks I want to leave him for Archie. We've been talking about getting married one day. We were gonna go to Yale together! What makes it seem like I'm just gonna ignore all that and suddenly leave for a guy I've barely talked to all year? It sounds ridiculous!"

"It sounds sexist," said JB. "I've been reading this author - Laura Mulvey-"

"Oh my God," said Betty. "You could not more obviously be Juggie's sister."

JB rolled her eyes. 

"Anyway," she said, "Jughead suggested it, and then I started reading a lot of kinda feminist stuff. It's not exactly complex to suggest that expecting you and Veronica to fight over a man for years - expecting you to fall in love over a kiss you didn't really want - you don't need to know a lot to think that that's some pretty old-fashioned stuff to think about a girl, you know? It's gross. It's gross that Alice thinks you'll do that and it's fine. It's gross that you have to live here, as well, after all the shit she said to you."

Betty stated at her. 

"I'm never going to understand how someone like Gladys raised a kid like you," she said eventually. "FP, maybe, but Gladys? Who threatened her own son? You act like you don't care, but you're so sweet."

"Ew," said Jellybean. "Shut up. I'm not sweet. And you don't make any sense either, if we're bitching about our folks. And Charles makes the least sense of all of us."

"Nothing about Charles makes sense," agreed Betty.

Jughead poked his head round the door, unconsciously mirroring his sister. 

"I brought you fries and a milkshake, Betty," he said. "Jelly, I got you three burgers. You guys okay? Can I hide in here? Alice is having hysterics about something downstairs, and I don't wanna get involved."

"Hysterics, Jug?" JB scowled. "Kinda gendered, there."

"Shit, you're right," said Jughead agreeably, plonking himself next to Betty, and leaning into her. Betty visibly relaxed, lacing her fingers with his. "She's just furious, then. And I'm not trying to be sexist; Alice is just always furious."

"I'd back that up," said Betty. "You guys have only lived here a few months; I've got Alice war stories going back years!" 

She seemed cheery, but her hand tightened in Jughead's. JB scowled, and handed Betty one of her burgers. 

"We're gonna stay up here for dinner," said JB defiantly, "and you're gonna help me with my homework, so Alice can't complain, and then we're gonna watch _To Have And Have Not_ and talk about women on screen, and classic detective stuff for you two geeks. Alice and FP are welcome to each other."

Betty seemed about to protest, but Jughead whispered _we're like Bogart and Bacall, but we'll solve our mysteries together_ in her ear, prompting her to blush. 

_I can have what I want_ , thought Betty. _Fuck what my mom thinks I should want - fuck what Archie and Cheryl think I should want - fuck fighting over a boy I don't even talk to - this is my family, right here._

_This is what I want._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> betty and archie talked once in like eight episodes. in how to get away with murder betty was nothing but rude to archie. jughead and betty were built up so, so strong up to the murder. if you wanted me to consider it any other than genuinely bad writing, build that sucker up; don't make Betty and jughead consistently loving and talking through their problems and then be like 'ooh! a kiss! all of that character development is redundant because the plot forced two characters into a kiss! for atrocious reasons!' 
> 
> was the whole stonewall plot, way more fun than most of the A-plots of series 2 or 3, just to get us to this point? because they should have laid some groundwork then, instead of having archie being a fucking superhero or the rum plot or whatever. this is an asspull, but it feels like it was the whole goal of the stonewall thing, to get to such a genuinely ludicrous situation that it could apparently threaten such a stable couple. and it's still terrible writing, even with sixteen episodes to foreshadow it.
> 
> write a character arc you creeps
> 
> forcing feelings via a semi-unwilling kiss is gross. Varchie seemed to have doubts about their future, sure, but bughead didn't. nothing about it is logical or in character. 
> 
> stop it. it's weird and feels oddly coercive - feelings developed during a fake kiss are better left to film and tv's past - and uncomfortable


	3. When you think the night has seen your mind, that inside you're twisted and unkind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We're all crazy," said Jughead once. Jellybean wonders how true that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i'm going to talk about about the show's portrayal of mental health here, so please, skip this if it is not something you feel comfortable reading.

The thing was, reflected Jellybean, maybe she was going crazy after all.

After enough time in Riverdale, stuff had started making sense to her that she would’ve actively ridiculed before she moved back here. Jughead and Betty recruited the FBI to fake Jug’s death? Made sense; someone was trying to kill Jughead. A teenager was running a speakeasy, even though there was no prohibition? Great; she was sure someone out there thought an early foot in business was impressive. 

  
Still, thought Jellybean, a lot of it made no sense.

  
She’d heard a lot of the stories from the other kids at middle school, then run home to quiz Jug and Betty about it. Yeah, there was a drag race. Yeah, Veronica burned a guy to death in said speakeasy, but he was a murderer who’d walked in off the road, so who could blame her? 

  
Yeah. That Archie guy fought a bear.

  
The thing was, all of those things weren’t normal, at all, and the people of Riverdale seemed to shrug it off as if it was unimportant. And it wasn’t just how unimportant it seemed to them, it was just stuff that they should have questioned, as well.

“Was there really a quarantine?” asked JB once, when they were all in the kitchen, eating a pizza on one of the welcome evenings when Alice and FP were both late at work. “I know we’re all used to the idea now, but the whole town? Just… cut off from outside?”

  
Betty sighed.

  
“Yeah, there was,” she said reluctantly. “People were having seizures – including me-”

  
“Which Alice let slip,” mentioned Jughead. Betty glanced up at him, and he gave her shoulder a squeeze.

  
“Because someone was letting chemicals run into the water supply, and they pretended it was a contagion, not a pollution problem. Your brother was trapped outside town, he’d just come back from seeing you in Toledo, and we were separated for weeks, until the quarantine just kind of… fizzled out. Ironically.”

  
“Did you not have seizures, then, Jug?”

  
Jughead shook his head, cuddling Betty closer.

  
“I wouldn’t have, anyway,” he admitted. “For some reason, the seizures only affected women. Teenage girls, actually.”

  
JB stared at him. What kind of a drug _only_ affected teenage girls? That didn’t make any sense. And why hadn’t that news reached them in Toledo? Such a bizarre story should have at least been covered in the crappier news media, something as titillating as an illness that only affected young women? It would have been gross, and she would’ve hated it, but it should have been serious news.

It wasn’t even the weirdest and creepiest thing that had happened, by far. There had been murders – murder after murder – some by Betty’s father, some by that Cheryl girl’s father, lots by a whole range of people – and it had got to the point where the murder rate in Riverdale was completely off the scale by comparison to the rest of the country, but no-one seemed to notice any more. There had been that day when JB and Betty were awoken by _gunshots_ from the house next door; someone had tried to kill Archie and his mom, and even though JB’s dad had leapt out to work on it, responsible adult that he now was, no-one had given it much thought before or after.

  
JB worried that she’d start to get that same kind of familiarity and complacency that the people of Riverdale had. Her own mom had contributed to the madness: she’d nearly been killed, she’d nearly had _Jug_ killed, she’d got Jellybean kidnapped. But no-one was suggesting that JB had inherited madness from her.

  
That was the explanation for everything here. Betty’s father and Mr Blossom both attempted filicide? They were cousins, who’d inherited a tendency to murder, down the family tree, and Betty (and, from what JB had heard, the Cheryl Blossom girl too) were supposed to have the same thing. JB dreaded to think what her little not-cousins – JB’s half-brother’s half-sister’s babies, whose parents had been almost-distant-but-maybe-not-enough cousins – were supposed to be like, since both of their grandfathers and one of their grandmothers were murderers.

  
Then, of course, there was the far more likely explanation, that all this stuff about inheriting tendencies was bullshit.

  
As far as JB was aware, Betty was constantly afraid of her own mental health (Alice had had her on Adderall since she was fourteen or fifteen?) taking a turn for the worse. She didn’t talk much about it, except to Jug, and JB had once made the mistake of overhearing one of their painful, frightened conversations about it, while Betty had still thought that she might be genetically pre-disposed to murder – and there was that conversation she’d had with JB while Jug was hidden, saying that Veronica, that _Alice,_ the people who were meant to be almost the closest in the world to her, thought she was capable of _that,_ thought Betty was twisted and wrong. 

  
Betty was obscenely clever, and could have known better, really, but Alice had fed her insecurities about mental health the way she had never fed her daughters fatty foods. Every time anyone mentioned Betty and Jughead having sex (ew, ew, ew), it seemed to be some disastrous thing, some dreadful thing that Betty (not Jug) should feel ashamed of and be punished for. Add to that the Farm’s manipulations, and the Stonewall Prep stuff, and no wonder poor Betty had been so scared when she confessed her fears to Jellybean during those bleak days when they didn’t know if Jughead would survive the second attempt on his life.

  
There was another thing. Jughead woke up yelling sometimes, loud enough that JB could hear him through her earphones. Of course he was traumatised; he nearly died in Betty’s arms. He was scared, too, of falling into the grip of addiction the way their father had, so he didn’t drink much. He only found out about it by accident from Betty (not a parent, not an adult who should have been helping him; Betty had only found out herself when some girl called Josie had had her mother yell about it, in a room full of people).

  
Both of the duo in the room next to her should have been seeing professionals, not that woman at the school who’d told Jug he had a persecution complex about murderers and people trying to steal his work.

  
He’d come home one day, upset about it, on one of his rare long weekends home from Stonewall.

  
“Do you really think I’m too harsh to Dad, Jelly?” he said, fiddling with his beanie. “The Burble woman said I’m hiding from my real issues by making myself a victim in all of my situations. Am I doing that?”

  
Jellybean couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said, something placating and meaningless. She was a teenager; she couldn’t be expected to give him the kind of advice that an actual adult who knew about stuff would know. 

  
Oh, she remembered. She decided to distract him, asked him to come and watch that Halloween film that Betty had mentioned weeks ago with them. He had leapt at the chance.

  
But, thought Jellybean, Jughead should have been seeing a trauma counsellor person or something. Persecution complex, _bullshit;_ people really had been trying to steal his work, frame Betty for his murder, and kill him. If Jellybean stayed in Riverdale, she was going to go to Ms Burble and give her a load of crap.

  
But as much as Betty and Jug could use counselling, there were other people that Jellybean had heard about who needed help, and certainly weren’t going to get it. There was Veronica, for a start; JB would have thought that killing a man and then returning to work in the same place every day would be pretty horrifying, no? But everyone seemed to have ignored that. The Archie guy, who JB had had such a crush on before she realised how weird he was (not that Jug wasn’t weird, but it was a different kind of weird – Archie was boy weird, feelings weird, gross), he’d slept with a teacher, didn’t they say, when he was like fifteen? Ew. Illegal levels of ew, and no-one seemed to suggest that the fifteen-year-old boy was a victim? That maybe there were some issues there, that Archie should have had support through that, and it shouldn’t have just been forgotten? 

  
And the Cheryl one.

  
Ew.

  
The Cheryl one had bullied Betty for years. The Cheryl one had apparently stalked the Josie one, who JB had never met (had she been one of Archie’s girlfriends? Probably. Jellybean didn’t particularly want to know), had framed some guy for it, and had him arrested. Everyone apparently knew it, but Cheryl had never seen any consequences. JB had overheard yet another conversation (she had invested in better earplugs, eventually) that Cheryl had kept her brother’s corpse in the house with them, that her girlfriend, Jug’s former friend Toni, had just kind of gone along with it, and it had taken her months to get rid of the body.

  
(“There are archaeological cultures where they kept their relatives in the house by building them into the walls,” she’d heard Jughead say cheerfully. Betty had not replied, and a few moments later Jug had said sorry for making fun of the situation.)

  
And Alice was just letting those two girls raise her grandkids in that house, with only a senile granny for supervision.

  
What the hell?

  
Alice had been so keen to get both of her daughters committed; every time she felt like she couldn’t cope with their behaviour, it was off to the nuns for them, so no wonder she didn’t want to be responsible for two toddlers. Betty had talked about her time in the Sisters of Quiet Mercy very rarely.

  
“Poor Polly,” she said once. “Pregnant with her murdered boyfriend’s baby. Rejected by our parents, our mom, for making the same mistakes they did. And then she… she was so broken, after being there for so long. Jellybean,” she said seriously, putting their math homework aside, “people like Edgar Evernever prey on vulnerable people. Don’t trust people like that.”

  
But no-one had ever tried to have Jughead committed, or tried to make a problem out of him being interested in sex, even when he had fallen deep into Gryphons and Gargoyles, according to him and Betty. No-one told Jughead he might have the same addictive personality as his old man, who’d made such a mess of his life in years past. No-one told Archie he was doomed to be crazy, although the guy roamed the streets of Riverdale at night in a mask, trying to punch random bad guys (for the second time, according to a disbelieving Jug) and accidentally provoking gang wars. No-one told Archie that sleeping his way across town and resenting it when his supposed childhood sweetheart wouldn’t ‘wait’ for him, patient and ready to fix him, was unhealthy adolescent fantasy, rather than gripping romance.

  
That kind of stuff seemed to be reserved for Betty, who was terrified of it, and Cheryl, who embraced it.

  
Betty didn’t deserve the exploitation. Cheryl didn’t reserve the romanticisation. They both deserved sympathy and fucking help, not whatever this town thought they needed.

  
Only girls, huh? Who’d have thought it?

  
“I’m going to go to a therapist, for real,” said Betty. They were all sitting in Jellybean’s room, their frequent defence against Alice, who was still too uncomfortable with Gladys’ daughter to barge in the way she did to Betty and Jughead’s room. Charles was there, on one of his rare days off from the feds, unfamiliar in a t-shirt and jeans, helping Betty and Jughead make a list of all the things that they might need for life in the adult world. It was very useful, JB thought, to get advice from someone who was neither a gang leader, nor a control freak who was in denial about her daughter’s imminent departure.

  
Yeah, JB made sure she got up and checked the post before Alice did. Fuck Alice. 

  
“You talked about it, last summer, before all the Gargoyle King stuff started,” said Jughead. “I’m sorry I kind of brushed you off then. I thought you were right, but I was scared to tell you so, in case you thought I was calling you crazy."

  
Betty gave him a smile.

  
“I can put you on to some of the people I know from the Bureau,” said Charles. “It’s not much, but maybe they can get you a referral to decent therapists, especially once you leave Riverdale and need to make new connections. They try to help people who’ve been through trauma.”

  
“Thank you, Charles,” said Betty. 

  
“You too, Jughead,” added Charles. “You’ve been through some pretty horrible things in the last few years. I think it might be good for you too.”

  
Jughead nodded.

“I don’t want me and Betty to become psychological crutches for each other,” he admitted. “We’re a team; a partnership; but I don’t want us to become so entangled that we can’t separate our issues, Betty, I want to support you, not patronise and protect you. I made the mistake of trying to do that before, and it was… so wrong. And I don’t want us to be like Toni and Cheryl; I want you to call me out on my bullshit, like you did with Quill and Skull. And I’d do the same for you, if you ever join a secret society that want to murder you.”

Betty clutched his hand, and smiled at Charles and JB.

  
“We’re not going to make those mistakes, are we?” she said. “And Charles didn’t fall into the trap FP fell into, he got himself out. JB, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you to make your own terrible decisions on your own terms, without either of our moms to steer us into them.”

 _I have_ , thought JB. Perhaps Betty and Jughead would allow her to come and stay with them a lot, and she could hang out more with Charles, once they’d left.

She couldn’t regret them leaving. They needed to get out of Riverdale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nah if you're going to write mental health like this, riverdale, how about don't fucking write it at all. especially when an actress who has been admirably frank about her own experiences says she's not that comfortable with it, maybe don't lean harder into the plotline, huh?
> 
> yes so mental health issues are only for fragile girls. on lesbians they are sexy and fun! including stalking and gaslighting and corpses! but the ladies are kissing so it's sexy! on the girl next door who should not be sexy, it is scaryyyy, and it's also sexy but it's BAD sexy and she will be kink-shamed, don't you worry. also no men have ever had mental health issues in the same way and we should not worry about them, ever
> 
> and some drugs only affect attractive young women, we all know it's true guys
> 
> also: who remembers when they changed chuck clayton, sensitive artist, into 'sexual predator black man, mainly towards white women'? also chuck clayton who they also had arrested, because a white girl framed him for her stalking, which she never suffered any meaningful consequences for? and they had a character literally tell him he was redeemed, rather than showing us anything, and then we never saw him again?
> 
> why must cheryl
> 
> that's it that's the question


	4. Sex Education

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty reflects on sex in Riverdale, and how little she can actually tell Jellybean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's an angry one guys
> 
> NB the end notes are going to be pretty resentful about 4x17 so feel free to ignore that if it pisses you off.

When JB wants to ask Betty about sex, Betty has no idea what to say.

  
For a start, she has only had sex with one person; she’d thought about it before she and Jug were a thing, of course, but the reality is, she only wants to have sex with one person. She knows it’s a little strange, in this day and age, but she cannot imagine feeling comfortable with it with anyone else.

  
When she was younger, she thought about losing her precious virginity to Archie; how it would be magical, careful missionary sex, the kind of thing Alice wanted her to preserve for marriage, or at least until she was in her twenties. 

  
Betty cannot imagine thinking that any more.

  
For one, the night she ‘lost’ her ‘virginity’, it didn’t feel like losing something, it felt like gaining something, and not some important part of her soul. The idea of putting value on some imaginary purity, which she’d been tricked into believing for years, seemed so bizarre to her in retrospect. She gained a pleasurable new way to enjoy the boy she was in love with’s company. 

  
It didn’t belittle her to have sex for the first time in a trailer. It wasn’t magical, for sure; both of them were so inexperienced and nervous, giggling at their clumsiness. It could hardly have been further removed from that bland romance novel that Betty had once imagined. Instead, they were able to learn together, to understand what each other liked, what felt good, and what didn’t really work for them.

  
Most stuff worked for them, to be honest.

  
“I never thought this would happen to me,” Jughead had confessed. “The idea of sex… it just didn’t hold any interest for me, you know?”

“Didn’t you want to have sex with me?” asked Betty, insecurity rearing its ugly head. 

  
“Of course,” Jughead responded. “I want to have sex with you because you’re you. I like making you feel good. I just can’t imagine it feeling like this with someone I didn’t love, the way I love you. And the thought of sticking my dick in someone I don’t really care about? That’s pretty nauseating, to be honest.”

  
Crude, but apparently true to Jughead’s inner workings.

  
So the truth is, Betty didn’t have much to offer JB when she comes home raging about how bad their Sex Ed lessons have been. Saying ‘your brother and I might be into tying one another up, now and then’ could scar Jellybean for life! And Betty’d only had heterosexual sex! JB should get an understanding of the vast wealth of things she could be interested in, not just one straight girl’s limited experience.

  
But Betty did not know who else to ask.

  
Veronica had had a lot more sex than her, that’s for sure. Betty had never had a problem with it (apart from one brief, regrettable argument where she’d hurled accusations at Veronica out of anger, rather than logic, for which she is bitterly sorry), but for some reason, she knew that some of the people in Riverdale thought less of Veronica for enjoying sex, and sex with a slightly less long-term romantic attachment than Betty and Jughead’s experience.

  
“Apparently, the fact that I dared to have sex with Archie without four months of courting and a proposal of marriage means our relationship isn’t built on anything other than attraction,” Veronica had snapped once, when she and Betty were at Pop’s. There was some gaggle of Vixens in the corner, whispering things about the two of them, and Veronica had decided to let them know that she simply didn’t care.

  
So, JB, thought Betty, putting down her bulletpoints neatly. Number one: you can have sex whenever you feel ready. No-one is entitled to think less of you or the person you chose to do it with, unless it hurts people. The idea of that makes Betty feel sick.

  
Number two: women who love women.

  
Betty can’t help much there. Her experience of same-sex relationships is exclusively contained to Veronica’s stupid, rather unwelcome kiss at the River Vixen auditions on the first day of sophomore year. Again, she’d have had no problem if Veronica was gay, or attracted to her; but it had simply been for show, and to get people talking, and Betty felt like it had been a very cheap ploy.

  
She could ask Toni and Cheryl, she supposed. Toni was bisexual, although she, for some reason, never said that; and Betty did not feel comfortable asking the girl who decided to kiss Jughead when he was extremely vulnerable from Archie deliberately breaking his heart, when Betty had _asked_ him not to be cruel. She didn't blame Jughead for that, and had resented Toni ever since Jughead explained the circumstances to her, just because it was a manipulative thing to do.

  
Speaking of manipulative, there was Cheryl. Betty could ask her cousin about sex between women, or ask her to tell JB. But Cheryl seemed to have a strange attitude to sexuality. There was the stalking Josie thing, which Betty wasn’t keen on, and then the way that Cheryl and Toni were so lauded for being out and proud, while poor Kevin has usually had to hide his hook-ups away, the idea of two men kissing somehow much more offensive to the people watching the kids of Riverdale than two girls kissing.

  
_There’s that male gaze, JB_ , thought Betty.

Number three: men who have sex with men.

  
Oh, Kevin. She hadn’t heard much from him lately, but every single one of his hook-ups had ended in disaster, and now there were rumours spreading that Kevin was involved in some sort of weird fetish videos. Betty was not one to judge, yet again, since her bizarre decision to do web-camming a few years ago (she would not be mentioning her personal experience of that to JB), but she couldn’t understand why Kevin had to hide his relationships away so much. All the same-sex relationships in their school seemed to be so troubled! What a thing to tell Jellybean!

And when he had sex with Moose! It went so terribly, with his dad, as if he was being punished for enjoying sex with another boy who he was in love with! 

  
The only person who had had that worse was Betty.

  
Sometimes, she really did feel lie she was being punished, every time something terrible happened after she and Jughead had been intimate. Their first, serious make-out session in his trailer? Interrupted, and her boyfriend was pressured into joining a gang seconds later. They slept together innocently? Oh yes, trouble with Alice. She tried to join his world and look good for him? He was forced to split up with her to protect her. They got back together, and had sex for the first time? Bam! Forced to cover up a murder. Sex could only be had in the dirty bunker for a while. Having sex with her long-term, happily entangled boyfriend at his school resulted in blackmail through a sex tape.

  
Sometimes, Betty reflected, she felt as if some cosmic force was attempting to shame and punish her for having non-vanilla sex with her working-class, intellectual equal boyfriend, instead of the school sports star she’d imagined in her youth.

  
Yeah, well, fuck that.

  
“Okay, JB,” she said. “What do you actually want to know?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, Hedwig's about straight people. archie and betty's characters are absolutely ruined by the completely ooc decision to go with a fucking cheating storyline. have any of the writers ever been cheated on? I don't care if they think 'they're teenagers, it happens all the time'. yeah, well, when it happened with people I knew at school it broke hearts, it was traumatic, and several friendships were ruined permanently. 
> 
> you cannot expect people who were invested in the previous 75 episodes of character development to enjoy it at all.
> 
> so betty apparently goes off for a snog with archie because jughead has PTSD symptoms? betty, who has never shown any sign of behaviour like that in nearly a hundred episodes? betty, who is betraying her supposed best friend in one of the worst ways a friend can? betty, who spent the whole rest of the series getting closer and closer to jughead, and planning for their future, does this? 
> 
> no she fucking doesn't
> 
> it's insulting how badly it's been written. there was an easy way to draw it out across the series, to show betty and jughead struggling with the distance, and betty growing closer to archie… I wouldn't have liked it, but it would have been believable tragedy, and made the cheating a little more sympathetic and plausible. but this? feelings forced through a fake kiss, and then a fairly minor argument? fuck off. that's objectively bad fucking writing.
> 
> I don't think I can go on watching riverdale any more. the reversal of betty's four-season character development - the sheer misogyny of returning to a love triangle based on a childhood crush without setting it up at all - it's cheapened every romantic interaction a far better constructed relationship has ever had. you're telling me that in the seventeen scene - the thirty-six hours scene - every bit of time jughead and betty spent following their common interests - betty was just settling for jughead, waiting for archie to finally see her?
> 
> fuck off with your straight male fantasy Madonna-whore bullshit. leave a well-written female character out of this, and don't trash her fucking character along the way.
> 
> guess we now know why betty had something horrible happen to her every time she had sex. punishment for not preserving her purity for mr fucking male insert saint archie.
> 
> fuck off.

**Author's Note:**

> why is alice's characterisation so inconsistent? every time you sort of like her, she does something horrible - see her ruining betty's lone triumph in quiz show. and then season 3, she was eventually FBI so it was all fine? yeah that doesn't make up for all the shit she pulled in the interim. nor does one episode about counselling (which largely concerned alice forgetting that she very much knew betty and jughead were shagging? like there was a whole scene, including implied contraceptive use by betty?) make up for the horrible shit alice has done throughout the series. 
> 
> and while FP's character development has been more consistent, why did jughead HAVE to accept that his dad was trying his best? yeah we know that, but he has grabbed jughead violently a few too many times, said cruel things to him and legitimately sucked enough pre-canon that jughead lived under a bridge rather than live with him. he was a mess. jughead did not have to apologise for shit in that episode.
> 
> this is in no way a reflection of their performances; skeet ulrich and madchen amick are great and their characters and their scenes with betty and jughead are among the best parts of this awful compelling programme. but fuck, would it kill you to write a character arc?
> 
> apparently it would
> 
> anyway instead of scenes were characters interact we're going to get a important and fantastic queer musical, but as written by a show who write kevin's character arc as 'gay and horny' and cheryl and toni as 'isn't gaslighting fun and sexy, i'm glad the working class black girl is now only there to say BABE to her rich white girlfriend, who has previously STALKED SOMEONE AND SENT THEM A PIG'S HEART IN A BOX but it's fine because she's constantly being nasty to people. also let's give them a super gratuitous sex scene because we don't want to see men kissing but two girls is great, hooray to the straight male gaze!'. what great representation that in no way leans into negative stereotypes! 
> 
> also in the seminal queer musical! a boring straight love triangle! inconsistent with all previous character development for betty throughout seasons 2.5-4.5! because fuck good writing i guess! brought to you by the sexual politics of the 1940s! enjoy!
> 
> why the fuck do i watch this show
> 
> sorry for the rant
> 
> gonna go watch a compilation of all the bughead scenes


End file.
